Go to the back of the queue

The Australian 14/10/09

The Australian 14/10/09


It was quite nostalgic dragging out the old Phil Ruddock cadaver, I mean caricature yesterday. Sadly for Phil, the days of mass hysteria over boat people are, like inarticulate US presidents, gone. Let’s hope so, anyway.

Mate

The Hobart Mercury 26/9/09

The Hobart Mercury 26/9/09


Every political party has their unpalatable extreme.

For the Greens it’s compulsory vegetarianism for all citizens with tree-hugging re-education camps for recidivists, for the Libs it’s the idea that rendering down the unemployed for soap makes good economic sense, for the Nats it’s Wilson Tuckey, the Democrats democratted themselves out of existence and for Family First, well, where to start?

The Achilles Heel of the ALP is mates and in Tasmania it’s reached pandemic status. Their only hope is that they manage to suck up to so many mates by March that their mates form a majority of voters, but that’s only if these mini-mates fail to notice that there’s an elite club of Special Mates and they haven’t been shown the secret handshake (it involves unzipping your fly).

Now the spin don’t work, it just makes things worse…

The Hobart Mercury, 18/9/09

The Hobart Mercury, 18/9/09


…and after the election, we most likely won’t see your face again.

Okay, we all know the Tasmanian ALP and Libs are minor subsidiaries of Gunns Ltd, but if they’re going to be so embarrassingly obvious about it, could they at least save us the weasel words and make it official policy?

As Howard discovered in 2007, eventually the spin stops working. Announcing another bike track really isn’t going to help.

A shiny happy clappy internet

first published in The Australian (Media section) 14/9/09

first published in The Australian (Media section) 14/9/09


It’s been really really hard not to make fun of Steve Fielding’s self-proclaimed learning difficulty, and just as well, because it’ll be the first thing up against the firewall when Stephen Conroy’s Sucking Up To Family First’s Internet Revolution comes. So I’ll just say that it explains a lot, and bring on the double dissolution post haste.
Call me a cynic, but when it comes to censoring the internet, I wouldn’t trust any government to ****UNAUSTRALIAN COMMENT DELETED****